


A Different Sort of Shield

by Westgate (Harkpad)



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Typical Violence, Fluff, Gen, Protective!Steve, Protective!team, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 23:20:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1406344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harkpad/pseuds/Westgate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Hawkeye goes down in the midst of battle, Cap and the others come up with contingency plans for shielding him better. Clint gives the plans dumb names because it makes him feel better about being planned for. </p>
<p>For this prompt at avengerkink: "So in the movie, Steve used his SHIELD to protect Natasha from the explosion. Could I see Hulk or Tony or Thor do this kind of thing for Clint? Is there now an arrangement in place that whoever is closet to Clint and Nat when the explosions or shooting starts will act as a shield for them? Because kevlar might be effective, but a big green rage monster/immortal/super soldier/armoured suit is a hundred times better. I just want to see someone wrap them themselves around Clint to keep him safe."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Different Sort of Shield

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo, this is unbeta'd. It may also have gotten a little derailed. I'll leave it to you guys. Thanks so much for reading!

Steve couldn’t help seeing Bucky in Clint’s brash grin or hear him in Clint’s sarcastic drawl. Clint’s confidence lying atop a layer of kindness was also unmistakably Bucky. He saw Bucky in Clint’s smile and heard him in Clint’s laugh. He heard his own need for order and felt his love for Peggy’s competence in Phil’s voice. Tony offered a guide to the new world, Bruce offered a stabilizing rudder any time he started to get overwhelmed, and Natasha showed him subtlety and the ability to hide his uncertainty and come across sure and strong even when he wasn’t. Thor, well, if Thor reminded him a little of DumDum Dugan, he couldn’t help it, and he found himself laughing more around Thor than anyone else. When Clint and the team let Steve into their world, he got something he thought he’d never find again after his world froze. Steve had what he needed and more than he thought he deserved with each of them. He’d fight to the death to keep them safe.

Sometimes that wasn’t possible, though, when he was out of range of someone when he shouldn’t be. They had rote strategy for other scenarios – civilians, important buildings, and landmarks. They had placement of the team for certain ways villains attacked. They’d been working and living together for over a year now and they worked pretty seamlessly, including their sort of playbook for at least twenty different situations. Today it happened quickly, and the others would tell him it was too quick for anyone to have helped, but Steve figured that between himself, Tony, Hulk, and Thor, they should have been able to have someone close enough when they saw the explosion coming. They should have had a plan for this, too.

But they didn’t, and Hawkeye was caught ducking down a side street by himself when the giant ant-like robot unleashed a flaming explosion seventy-five yards from his post. Clint was quick, but a debris pattern resembling a twenty foot wall was definitely going to hit. He went down hard, only a weak ‘unf’ crossing the comms. Hulk and Iron Man were able to deal combined blows afterward and the robot went tumbling to the ground, but the damage was already done.

“Hawkeye, report!” Steve called as he scrambled over rubble to get to Clint’s last known position, and he was greeted with silence. “Is anyone closer than me to the south alley? That’s where he was posted,” Steve called, forcing the fear out of his voice thanks to habit, and Natasha responded curtly, “I’m almost there.”

A moment later as Steve rounded a corner to see her crouched over Clint’s still form, she added, “Get a med team here, now.” Her hands were slicked with Clint’s blood when Steve skidded to a halt and crouched down, and he swallowed thickly when he saw blood seeping from Clint’s neck despite her fingers pinching against it tightly. His throat was drenched, and Steve shuddered at the sight. Clint was already pale and it was clear that his suit had not protected his neck or arms from fallout. “Might have nicked his artery,” Natasha murmured, trying to adjust her grip to press harder and stop the blood. Her hands were steely and still, her eyes focused on Clint’s neck.

Steve felt his inability to do anything like a claw down his back, and when Thor landed behind him Steve stood and tore the cape from Thor’s throat and wrapped it tightly around Clint’s torso. Thor didn’t flinch, and helped Steve bundle it around Clint’s cooling arms. It was a useless gesture, really, as the med team appeared a second later and took over, calling out commands and shuffling Clint onto a stretcher, performing some street triage, and getting Clint and a medic aboard a nearby helicopter in under a minute.

Steve sat back on his heels and listened as the drone of the helicopter blades echoed into the distance, thinking the blades sounded too similar to a train running over steel tracks. Natasha stared at her drenched hands blankly and Thor held his discarded cape like a child might hold a security blanket, close to his chest. There was a pool of Clint’s blood mocking them from the pavement, so Steve pulled Natasha to her feet and they shuffled away to their own waiting SHIELD vehicle.

Steve bit the inside of his cheek raw and bloody by the time they were released a couple hours later, and when they agreed to stop and clean up before going to Clint’s side, knowing no news was good news right now, he scrubbed his skin until it was pink.

Tony knocked on the wall outside Steve’s shower and said, “Come on, Cap. Let’s go see what’s going on with Merida,” his voice low and rough.

Steve remembered twisting his hands over his Commandos a few times, but this felt different. Bucky and Peggy would’ve been different if he’d had to wait outside a hospital bay for them. Of course, he wished more than most things that he’d actually had the opportunities to stand outside their sick rooms, but this was where he was now. Clint was his friend, too. He had the opportunity to worry now, with Clint, and he took it. He paced at first, before Tony muttered something about wearing a hole in the lobby floor and Natasha tugged at his elbow until he sat down heavily in an uncomfortable chair. Bruce brought them all coffee and tea at one point, and Thor leaned against a wall and absently fiddled with his cape. Steve ran the scene of the explosion over and over in his head, asked everyone a question here and there, and caught himself wringing his hands at one point. No one commented.

The doctors let the team into Clint’s med bay room many hours later, after they finally got him stable enough for surgery and through it, and unfortunately the team did have a routine for bedside vigil in place. Natasha slid onto the bed on Clint’s right side, away from his neck wound and careful of the bandage covering the other two deep lacerations on his left arm, one that had revealed bone. Steve pulled a chair up to the right side railing and gripped Clint’s hand loosely, rubbing in between his thumb and forefinger rhythmically, steady, savoring the way his skin was warmer than it had been on the street. Tony sat at Clint’s left side with his hand resting on Clint’s arm above all the bandages, while Thor stood near his head, absently running a hand through Clint’s dusty hair, un-matting it from where a surgical cap had been recently pulled off. Bruce took his spot at the foot of the bed, casually leafing through the chart and frowning from time to time.

Phil strode in after the team was in place, having been coordinating clean up and civilian debriefs, and Tony wordlessly let him have his spot at Clint’s arm and joined Bruce, who had moved to lean against the one windowsill in the room. Steve moved and gently took Phil’s coat and tie and set them on the windowsill before resuming his own spot.

When Clint’s eyes fluttered open an hour later, his voice was weak and airy but he tried a tired grin. “I should have run faster, huh?”

Steve swore he was channeling Bucky.

They took Clint home a few days later and the team flat-out hovered. His left arm was in a sling and he tired real easily, sagging into the couch and laying on Tony’s lap while Natasha pulled his feet into her hands for a massage. Bruce sat on the floor where Clint draped an arm over his shoulder, and Steve and Thor sat nearby, making sure he had tea or the ridiculous Jell-O pudding cups he was addicted to. Phil sat working on some paperwork, not-so-subtly checking on Clint from time to time.

Finally, though,Clint huffed loudly and sat up. He swallowed and rubbed his hand through his hair. “Look, you guys couldn’t have done anything. We get bad ops from time to time and this one sucked balls, that’s for sure. But you couldn’t have done anything and I’m okay. So just relax, all right?” He stared pointedly at Steve. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault and it wasn’t bad planning. It was a fucking wall of debris is all, and it couldn’t be avoided.” He stood carefully from the couch and only winced once. “I’m going to bed. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

After he left, Phil cleared his throat. “Actually,” he said, holding up his laptop, “I was just designing a cover strategy if we think explosions are imminent.” He started packing up his work.

Bruce chuckled and Steve said,” I’ve got some ideas, too.” He’d been running scenarios the whole time Clint was in medical and Natasha had been helping him iron out the kinks.

Tony offered, “I’ve been recalibrating the range of my force-field so it’ll cover someone else in addition to me.” Thor just laughed, adding, “Friendship leads to innovation,” and Phil nodded as he slipped off to follow Clint.

Steve watched him go, breathing deep and holding onto the fact that Clint was safe and home. He remembered not being able to let Bucky out of his sight the early weeks after he’d rescued him from Schmidt.

A month later Clint was finally cleared for field duty. At one point he glanced up in the middle of the chaos, slipped in from his new position, ducked, and let Steve tuck himself around Clint’s shoulders with the shield behind them as a wave of heat and metal ricocheted off in all directions.

After the battle, in the middle of debrief, he interrupted Phil’s questions with a surly, “I want to name the new shielding patterns you guys designed for me. Steve’s is code Linus, Hulk’s is code Lucky Charm, and Tony’s force field is code ‘Coolsville.’”

Thor shook his head. “Coolsville? I do not get the reference.” Phil just sighed. “The Iron Giant. Clint will show it to you sometime. He’s just being obnoxious.”

“As usual,” Natasha added.

Clint shrugged, glanced at Steve, and said, “Not that I don’t appreciate it. They just need cooler names than ‘Protect the archer.’”

“I gave those numbers, you know,” Steve answered, though he swore he saw Bucky’s defiance in the jut of Clint’s chin.

“Yeah, but that’s what they translate to and these names make it easier to ignore that.” His hand went absently to his neck where an ugly scar ran across the base, and everyone just nodded.

That night Tony pushed the coffee table out of the way, ordered over a hundred dollars’ worth of pizza, pulled seven beanbags out of thin air and loaded up “The Iron Giant” on the common room big screen. Steve thought it was one of the best movies he’d seen since waking up, and everyone ended up draped all over each other across the beanbags. Steve thought back to his Commandos and smiled. He remembered they’d all gotten along like this too, and if he compared Clint to Bucky a little too much, well.

The two of them together would’ve been a force to be reckoned with, that much was certain, and Steve would have made just as many plans to shield them both.


End file.
